Poverty Does Not Breed Extremism, Study Finds

The British government is investing over a billion pounds over a five year period to help reduce poverty. The article points out this aid is sent while British police officers are receiving heavy funding cuts.

But the argument is that spending money on Pakistan will help reduce the risk in Britain. But, ironically, it appears the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to support extremism. Meaning, this project heightens Britain to terrorist attacks from extremists - completely undermining the original goal of the aid.

If this were an online forum - I would only have one word for this: pwned.

Christine Fair, a South Asia expert at Georgetown University and one of the authors of the new paper, said there was no evidence for such sweeping assertions and that her study of 6,000 people suggested that poorer Pakistanis were actually less likely to support extremist groups than more affluent, better educated people.

"The terrorism literature has long held that poverty does not explain terrorism," she told The Daily Telegraph.

"Yet despite what would be a fairly robust body of literature, both the British government and the American government, have put together this canard that we can buy our way out of terrorism by investing in education and so forth. We simply don't find this."

I think it is fair to tackle the problem, especially if highly educated students seem to be at a higher risk of falling into extremist views. However, the universities should be keeping an eye on any extremist groups on campus, and cutting funding equally across the board. For example, there may be radical animal rights or environmental groups that support action that causes damage to people and property in the name of their cause. I don't like extremist of any sort, but I do cringe at the thought that universities may apply rules about what is deemed "extremist views". A bit subjective, no?